Russia has just bid farewell to the country’s most respected human rights campaigner and a veteran Soviet dissident, Lyudmila Alexeyeva. And Russia has just celebrated twenty-five years of its 1993 constitution, a document many consider pure decoration for a political system that creates its own rules. That the memorial events for Alexeyeva and a discussion of the state of the Russian constitution have coincided was a mere accident, but an ominous one.

Sexual and reproductive health is a human right. Yet almost everyone of reproductive age—some 4.3 billion people—will lack at least one essential sexual or reproductive health service over the course of their reproductive years.

Despite considerable progress in the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, last year 360,000 adolescent girls and young women were newly infected with HIV globally. AIDS remains the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age in sub-Saharan Africa, where three-quarters of new infections are among girls ages 15-19. DREAMS, a global public-private partnership led by the U.S.

On October 11, 2018, the Brazil Institute hosted five representatives of Brazil’s quilombola communities, including members of the National Coordination for the Articulation of Black Quilombola Rural Communities (CONAQ) and the Amazon Conservation Team of Brazil (Ecam).

The concept of environmentalism has changed over time. Initially focused on flora and fauna, conservation efforts increasingly strive to include the populations who have traditionally inhabited these lands. The change was partially prompted by criticism of traditional conservation strategies, which tend to follow Yellowstone’s top-down approach to conservation that favors extremely limited land use by local populations.

“Adolescence is a time to support young peoples’ access to information, to education, to skills and to services that can result in a healthy and safe transition into adulthood,” said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative, at a recent Wilson Center event on engaging youth and protecting their sexual and reproductive health and rights. “It’s time to make adolescents a priority,” said Barnes.

In recent months—and particularly in the weeks leading up to Pakistan’s July election—journalists, activists, and analysts have expressed concerns about growing threats to the Pakistani press. This event will feature a discussion of the current media environment in Pakistan. It will include the launch of a new Committee to Protect Journalists report and accompanying documentary, which is entitled “Acts of Intimidation: In Pakistan, Journalists’ Fear and Censorship Grow Even as Fatal Violence Declines.” How has Pakistan’s media climate and its challenges evolved over the years?

The Wilson Center, chartered by Congress as the living memorial to President Woodrow Wilson, is the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum. In tackling global issues through independent research and open dialogue, the Center informs actionable ideas for Congress, the administration, and the broader policy community.